Investment funds licensed by the Capital Market Authority achieved net purchases in the Saudi stock market for the second consecutive month at the end of last September.
According to the monitoring unit of the reports in the newspaper "Al-Eqtisadiah", based on the data of the Saudi financial market "Tadawul", the investment funds achieved, during the past two months, net purchases amounting to about 1.1 billion riyals.
Last August, the funds recorded net purchases of 221.35 million riyals, while net purchases in September recorded 874.1 million riyals, the highest net monthly purchases since last January, that is, for eight months.
The net purchases last September came after the funds recorded total purchases of 3.84 billion riyals and sales of 2.96 billion riyals.
According to the monitoring, the funds achieved net purchases for the second month in a row, despite the continued increase in market profitability, which hovers around 26 times (excluded from the losing companies), and the continuing decline in corporate profits by the end of the second quarter.
During the first nine months of 2020, investment funds achieved net purchases of 962.3 million riyals, as they recorded net sales in four months and net purchases in five months.
On the other hand, the share of free-float investment funds' ownership decreased at the end of last September to the lowest level compared to the beginning of this year, with the ownership percentage reaching about 10.99 percent, while at the end of August it was 11.04 percent and 11.43 percent. At the end of last year, the percentage of their free shares ownership continued to decline for the fourth consecutive month.
While the value of ownership of investment funds in the local stock market amounted to about 190.44 billion riyals at the end of September, compared to 180.79 billion riyals in August, while the end of last year amounted to 204.5 billion riyals.
Regarding the rest of the institutional investors in the Saudi market, the ownership of companies reached 577.16 billion riyals, which constitutes about 22.4 percent of the total free shares at the end of last September, and the ownership of government agencies reached 7.48 trillion riyals, while the ownership of the portfolios of managed institutions reached 47.99. One billion riyals by the end of the period.
The Saudi market has achieved gains of about 40 percent since the bottom of March, as these gains pushed stocks to the approach of the main index to erase all losses in 2020.
Economic Reports Unit
